So you're saying they didn't intentionally compose this picture in such a way as to increase the likelihood that people will donate?
This is not hacker news. There are lots of kids out there who are in just as much need of help. This one just happens to have a father who works on an open source product.
The classic nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate. The problem with your argument is that it's simply not backed up by evidence. There are plenty of cases of children who grow up in virtually identical environments, yet go on to have widely varying interests. My brother and I grew up experiencing basically all the same stimuli: same parents, same TV shows, same music, same magazines, same everything. As adults we couldn't be more different.
There's more to this picture than just stimulus response/valuation/categorization.
Why are there so many of these "I finally understand [cloures | pointers | misc CS concept]" posts? I mean these are pretty fundamental concepts that any first year CS student should be able to grasp pretty quickly.
Again, spoken like someone who hasn't lost someone. You may become progressively less likely to let any given person become that important to you over time, but losing someone truly important really doesn't get easier.
Only people who haven't really lost someone say this kinda stuff. The pain of loss eclipses all the good parts of having loved by a large margin, in my experience.